


Unfamiliar Sky

by Kit



Category: Circle Opens - Tamora Pierce, Emelan - Tamora Pierce, PIERCE Tamora - Works
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-25
Updated: 2010-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 04:35:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/120857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>To a mudrunner's daughter in Anderran, who knew brown in all its shades except under a blue sky, Chammur was a myth place. A magic place, with colours that caught at her even as her practical mind said there would be dust. </i> Broken. Beauty. Shape. Dedicate Rosethorn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfamiliar Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeroxidePirate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeroxidePirate/gifts).



**Unfamiliar Sky**

 _For Nicki, 2010_

* * *

 _“Tell the story again?” the words felt young in Rosethorn’s mouth even as she settled into her new name, and so the young mage glared even as she asked at the acrobat novice who had, in her journey to the Circle, taken a road that wound far out of Rosethorn’s imagination. She glared, and was given a smile._

 _“My mother dancing for the_ mutabir _? Rosie, I was four. It’s mostly fiction.”_

 _“Don’t call me that. And it’s...it’s beautiful.”_

 _“Your name?—oh, don’t scowl so. “_

 _A breathing pause, a storyteller pause._

 _“In the year 1006,” she began. “The family troupe passed though Chammur, the land of mazes and rock tinted like fine sunset glass under a burning sky. I remember cassis burning my tongue, pepper-sweet, and the thickness of barley in my mouth, and cymbals. Even children had them on festival days, and they were raw and terrible underfoot and from the rooftops. Everyone stared at us, we were so mixed and strange, and my mother, with her Tharios accent and bihan silks, caught the eye of the mutabir...”_

* * *

To a mudrunner’s daughter in Anderran, who knew brown in all its shades except under a blue sky, Chammur was a myth place. A magic place, with colours that caught at her even as her practical mind said there would be dust. There would _have_ to be dust, and dry death, and the only moisture that turned it to mud on her hands would be her own sweat until there was none left to give, and she was husked hollow.  But it was all brightness, still, even in Winding Circle, where there was sky and spray enough for anyone starved of blue. And the language, when she pressed to learn it, had syllables liquid enough for any land.

Standing there now, the dust crushed to no colour at all against heavy robes and slickened skin, in streets that had the poetry bled out of them long before now, along with any hope for the tired land, the mudrunner’s daughter had seen better days.

The wraith in front of her, Mila help the _world_ , had not.

“I’m sure Briar has informed you that I don’t _usually_ bite people after lunch.”

The child—Evvy; it had to be short for _something_ —looked up at her, eyes wide and, in combination with her sharp chin, all too uncomfortably close to Lark. Except that there there was no grace in her stance, in the quick, dry calculation Rosethorn thought she could catch across her face. That was a different familiarity.   

“Do your _plants_ bite for you?” she asked, with a fleeting look to the jasmine still intent on leaning in close to any secondary sun.

“You’re learning.”

Evvy blinked. “Was that...a joke?”

“You don’t know me _nearly_ well enough yet. And you’ve shown up just in time to help with the dishes, little _pahan_. Briar shouldn’t take too long with his responsibilities.”

The child scowled, following Rosethorn into the kitchen alcove. “Shouldn’t take too long with _me_ , then.”

“He needs to make this Stoneslicer _listen_. And speak up when you’re being rude.”

“Huh?”

“You have more fun, _I_ don’t have to strain to know if I need to hang you in the well.” Rosethorn paused. “And _don’t_ say—”

“—but there _aren’t_ any wells around here!”

“I’d drag you by your ear. A _long way_.”

“Oh, fair enough.” Evvy shrugged, taking up a rag and moving it over damp crockery.  “Hey, Rosethorn?”

The green mage tapped her foot.

“If _pahan_ Briar is my teacher now, does that make you some sort of _grand teacher_ , then?”

In a land she had yearned for and seen broken, its beauty worn and splintered into tired fragments of what it once was, an incorrigible girlchild with too-familiar eyes was not supposed to make her laugh.

But it felt _good_ , even just under her mud-dried skin, while Evvy spoke blithely on about her cats.

 


End file.
